Things to Come
The future has yet to be, but come it will. Science may be as a guide, but the religious life is the response. Religion, as quest, provides the life-driven purpose. For our species to live sanely on this planet, self interest will have to be compromised, a reduction in short-term opulence embraced, some will lose face, wealth, and power unwanted by the sane. Scientific reasoning and inconvenient evidence is all too easy to deny. The sane do not deny the what-is.
Science does not give people the will to live rightly. Mindful sensitivity does as it puts the lie to the fog of egoic righteousness. As the mind awakens to reality, the sense of self importance fades as do self-serving cravings. To be religious is a letting go with no regrets as nothing is lost. The belief in Self is the last to go, but goable it is.
Envisioning how we might live, must live if we are to merit the avoidance of extinction, makes clear the need to change old ways. The old way is the belief-based pursuit, both individual and collective, of self-interest by any means. But childhood should have its end, a willingness to give way to maturation. Maturity is not senility, it is better neural connections both within and between brains. Only the individual can be mature, so it must come one mind at a time. If enough come, a tipping point is reached and civilization changes. Gone will be the acquisitive who strive to amass the most toys before they die, make a name for themselves, and become jaded with respect to every pleasure. Yet now they lead, elected or otherwise, and sit in boardrooms. By default, with support of the military, they rule the world.
China once had to contend with self-serving Emperors, but for over two thousand years day to day governance was by a meritocracy. Perhaps Churchill was wrong and meritocracy is the worst form of government, or perhaps some combination of the worst two should be considered. Perhaps a democratic meritocracy has potential. Not only in that those who would serve might merit their office, but in that those who would vote might merit their opinions. If fundamental changes need be made, only inquiring minds can consider them. Those who believe in government of whatever form, like those who believe in religion, become stuck in time, are unable to change. The ability to think outside a box doesn't necessitate change, but it makes it possible.
Change is not always a bad thing. We live in a belief culture. A culture of inquiry might not be worse. We live in a growth culture driven by short-term self-interest. Living in a sustainable, non-exponential, non-competitive, non-growth society might not be worse than the overshoot and collapse that otherwise follows. In specifics the future cannot be predicted, but some issues are obvious. The response should be too.
We collectively need to know our limits, lessen our footprint on the planet, live within our means without pushing every system to its failure point. Although we have not yet consumed all, pushed all to failure, such is the way of things. We need change now to change things to come or we will be brought down in a violently disordered way. The alternative is to choose the material way down while choosing to become wealthy enough, and wise enough to prosper. Wealth enough is far less than many now have which they mistake for need.
Such is the current way of things. Those who seek to have will never have enough. The quest must be to have enough, to know what enough is, and to feel fortunate when you have it. This is an essential element of the religious quest to know the what-is.
We must know our needs from our wants, as there is no end in want, only eternal dissatisfaction. We each need the necessities of life, but in community can share the peripherals of life. To do so we need to live efficiently in small communities. It worked for our Pleistocene ancestors and, if our grasp of reality be better, we can use science and some technology to do better. At present, any claims to living better than our ancestors lived is dubious overall. That there is so much room for improvement is the good thing.
Making the World Safe for Sanity